The rest of the Gobbers weren't even a fight. They died like vermin – screaming, scrambling, cut down in clusters. The greenhorns took them apart with military-grade enthusiasm, and honestly? It would've been embarrassing if they didn't. They had every advantage. Armor, rifles, auto-targeting visors, shock batons, even drone-assist feeds.
Fully kitted with the best United Humanity could manufacture.
Or claim was the best.
Half the gear was held together with patches, bent brackets, and welds that screamed "temporary fix." Military-grade was starting to mean "guaranteed to work until you need it most." Berta's helmet had a crack that ran across the left visor like a spiderweb. One of Gino's shoulder plates had been scavenged from a different uniform entirely still had a different squad's insignia.
Didn't matter. Gobbers didn't need the best to kill.
They just needed something that fired.
By the time we cleared the sector, the last Gobber had been nailed to a wall by Amiel's precision shot. The greenhorns celebrated like they'd won a championship game. Some lit cigarettes. One idiot tried to take a trophy off a still-twitching corpse. One threw up in a bush. Normal end-of-raid behavior.
Then the waiting began.
They always waited.
For pathfinders to find a clean way through the next zone. For the drones to scan the routes. For the dozer units to roll in and turn wreckage into roads. For someone somewhere to sign a form that said it was okay to move another inch forward into no-man's land.
That was the job.
Kill non-humans, then wait.
Months in, he'd gotten used to it. The rhythm of violence, pause, paperwork, and more violence again. A loop. Endless. Predictable. Boring, if you let it be.
Cyma and their other support bot stood idle near the perimeter, weapon arms folded inward, power cores humming low. They were parked in standby like statues, all steel and latent violence. Berta perched nearby, axe propped on her shoulder, eyes scanning the horizon like it owed her money. Her armor hung loosely off one arm, the chest plate unfastened for comfort. She was sweating through the underlayer.
"Hey," Rus said, tapping her shoulder.
She didn't flinch. Just rolled her neck once, then grinned without turning.
"You tap me there, you might as well tap my chest or pussy while you're at it. Make it fun."
"God," Rus muttered. "You backed up or something?"
Her smirk faded, replaced by a weird, thoughtful look. "Lately… I think I like girls more."
Rus blinked. "Oh."
"Yeah," she said seriously, dragging the flat of her axe along the ground. "I dunno. Guys just smell… different. Sharp. Stale. Girls smell better. Not always. But sometimes."
The honesty was so sudden it caught Rus off-guard.
"Should I… congratulate you?"
She snorted. "Nah. It's probably just war brain. Hormones. Instinct. Too much murder, not enough release."
Then she slapped Rus's ass hard and leaned in close. "Could be fixed with a good fuck. Wouldn't even mind getting dirty right here, right now."
"I see you're still a horny menace."
"That's the fun part, Sir~"
Before Rus could respond, Amiel appeared out of the ruins like she'd spawned there. She didn't say hi. She didn't make eye contact. Just stood at their side like a shadow.
"You're degenerates," she said flatly.
Berta barked a laugh. "Thanks, sniper waifu."
Rus held up his hands. "For the record, I haven't entertained her even once."
Amiel blinked once, slowly. "Doesn't matter. You exist near her. Guilty by proximity."
Then she walked off, coat fluttering, expression still deadpan and unreadable. Somewhere, a camera drone tracked her movement with a quiet whirr.
Berta looked after her, then back at me. "You ever wonder if she was born like that?"
"No," Rus said. "I assume she came out of a cloning tank already disappointed in humanity."
She chuckled.
Seeing her like this. Rus figured he'd hog the radio and save himself from a barrage of sexual innuendos.
Keyed into Kilgore's channel. "Status on the eastward push?"
Static crackled, followed by his voice that was like gravel and cigarette smoke. "Lots of fliers out there. Gunships are taking hits. We're slowing the push. Might have to level a few nests before proceeding."
"Casualties?"
"Minimal. For now. But tell your people not to move until I give the green light. We're not losing anyone to a surprise swarm."
"Copy. Holding position."
Rus passed it on, first to the other fireteam leaders, then to his own. Berta, Amiel, Gino, Dan, even Foster. They gathered in what passed for a shaded rest zone, a collapsed billboard supported by half a wall and prayer. The squad sat around crates, weapons half-dismantled for cleaning or just resting across laps.
"No movement," Rus said. "HQ's bottlenecked. We wait."
Dan grunted. "Again?"
"Again."
Foster slumped against a crate and lit a cigarette with shaky fingers. "I swear, it's the waiting that kills you. Not the fighting. Just... sitting here."
Berta chuckled, dragging a whetstone across her axe. "If waiting kills you, you're in the wrong job."
He didn't argue. Because he was in the wrong job. Rus had noticed that Foster's seems a bit a messed up, but then again, maybe it was the stress getting to him.
The silence that followed wasn't peace. It was that dead air before something bad usually happened. The lull. The inhale before the scream.
They were killers being told to sit still. No one liked it. But they'd gotten good at pretending they did.
Amiel climbed a nearby structure and perched like a gargoyle, rifle already zeroed and eyes scanning the tree line with her drone out there somewhere. Cyma's Murder Bot stood nearby, unmoving, sensors softly pulsing.
They all went quiet.
Just the sound of boots in mud.
The soft whine of drone engines.
The faint static buzz of distant gunfire miles away.
And that thick, waiting stillness.
They just waited.
***
Seventy-two hours later, they were still moving.
Or trying to.
Even with enhanced strength, reinforced joints, and enough augmentations to put most gym rats to shame, mud was still mud. Superhuman or not, nobody walks clean through a swamp trying to pretend it's a road.
The convoy was crawling. Trucks groaned under the weight of wet terrain and old rust. Privates were knee-deep in sludge, hacking through overgrown brush like they were reenacting some ancient jungle war. Rus watched one poor bastard nearly face-plant as his shovel hit a hidden root. His buddy laughed until he got sprayed with muddy water. Everyone stank like mildew, fuel, and frustration.
And this was the easy part.
Back during the reclamation around Damasa ,they'd skipped this kind of terrain. Went straight through the swamp, awful, yes, but still manageable. This, though? This was a different breed of nightmare. Jungle-thick. Mud-slick. Crawling. A world where every step fought back.
Cyma and the Bot stood motionless, watching the greenhorns struggle like disappointed statues. Unbothered. Untouched. Inhuman in every way that counted.
Berta had given up pretending to care. She leaned against a broken tree trunk, flicking through her PDA like she was waiting for a bus. Stacy and Kate hovered beside her, eyes glued to the screen.
"Are you playing games?" Rus asked, voice flat.
Berta didn't even look up. "Tactical strategy simulator."
"That's a tower defense game."
"War is war."
Stacy nodded solemnly. "It has upgrades."
Kate added, "And skill trees."
Of course it did.
Meanwhile, the rest of the fireteam was strung out, eyes forward, bodies tense. Gino and Dan moved like wolves, quiet, watchful, weapons half-raised without needing to be told. Foster lagged slightly, still trying to find that sweet spot between twitchy and trigger happy.
He kept staring into the treeline.
"Try not to shoot friendlies," Rus told him.
He shrugged. "I'm trying. No promises, Boss."
The treeline out here wasn't friendly. The trees looked like they wanted to grab you. Branches crooked like claws, leaves slick with unknown moisture. Everything smelled wet and metallic, like rain on blood.
Then came the jet.
Fast. Sudden. Deafening.
It screamed overhead low, close and vanished just as quickly, trailing a sonic boom in its wake. They barely had time to register the roar before the payload landed.
Two mountains away, something exploded.
Not "exploded" like a detonation. Exploded like God cracked His knuckles and punched the earth.
The shockwave rolled across the valley, hitting the convoy like a shove from a giant. Metal groaned. Trucks rattled. Gear shifted violently. One rookie fell into the mud face-first and didn't even bother getting up for a full minute.
Gino whistled, low. "That wake-up call enough for you?"
Dan scanned the horizon. "That wasn't for show. They're softening up something nasty."
"No kidding," Rus said. "If they're dropping payloads like that two ridges out, whatever's ahead isn't just another nest."
Berta finally looked up from her game. "Think it's worth worrying about?"
He I watched the rising plume of black smoke in the distance, curling into the gray sky like a middle finger to peace.
"Yeah," Rus said. "I think it is."
Nobody said anything after that.
***
By the time they arrived at the forward operating base, the mud caked on their armor felt like a second skin. The convoy limped through the final stretch of jungle and broke into a clearing barely wide enough for a base, let alone a warzone. Floodlights lined the perimeter. Sandbags and prefabs formed a rough barricade. Turrets hummed overhead, scanning the treeline like bored executioners.
But what caught their attention wasn't the layout.
It was the people.
The FOB was packed with dozens of troops from Libertalia moving like ants, loading crates, setting up barricades, shouting into radios. And standing among them, looming and silent, were Counter teams.
Real ones.
Not greenhorns. Not probationary rookies like us.
Veterans.
Their armor wasn't standard-issue kevlar and chainmail hybrid. No these bastards wore full power armor. Bulky, scarred, functional. Plates welded over bullet impacts. Scorch marks across visors. Vents still hissing from recent heat discharge. The kind of suits you only got issued if your job required punching through nightmares.
And judging by the damage?
They'd just walked out of one.
Kilgore met Rus at the center of the FOB, his face more tired than usual, jaw clenched as he finished barking orders at a logistics officer. His uniform was streaked with grime. The kind of grime you didn't get from waiting around.
"You missed the party," he said, not bothering with a greeting.
Rus nodded toward the armored troopers. "What the hell did they run into?"
He exhaled, slow and heavy. "Riftborne."
That word hit like a hammer.
"Multiple?" Rus asked.
"One. Big one. Smart."
"Casualties?"
He tilted his head. "Enough."
He looked at the power-armored Counters again. One of them was sitting on a crate, helmet off, face bruised and stitched. Another leaned against a wall with a melted chunk of shoulder plating. No one talked. They didn't need to. They just sat there, silent and recharging, like machines that hadn't finished cooling down.
Riftborne weren't like Gobbers. They weren't dumb. They weren't predictable. They didn't fight in straight lines or die easily from bullets.
If you saw a Riftborne and lived?
It was because it let you.
"What did it do?" Rus asked.
"Broke through a patrol perimeter two clicks north," Kilgore said. "Cut one team to ribbons. Hit them hard and fast. Took three squads and a drone strike to pin it."
"And you killed it?"
"We buried it," he said grimly. "Didn't leave much left after the fast-movers hit them."
Rus' stomach tightened. Not fear, not exactly. Just that rising awareness that the rules were different when it comes to those bastards. Gobbers were pests. Orcs were threats. But Riftborne?
They were problems.
Berta walked up beside me, chewing a protein bar like it owed her money. "So. Are we getting new orders or standing around soaking in the shock of it all, Sir?"
Kilgore gave her a look but didn't answer. He was already looking past them, back toward the treeline.
Like he was expecting another one.
Like it wasn't over yet.
And maybe it wasn't.
Because once Riftborne show up they don't show up alone.